May 31, 2011

Overview

Our organization recently adopted Microsoft CRM 4.0. We developed a data conversion program to convert the data from the source systems and insert it into the new CRM system. Our initial effort was unsatisfactory because it ran way too slowly. We eventually solved our performance problems, and experienced a six-fold improvement in performance over our initial design! This report summarizes the challenges we faced, and our solutions, so that others who face performance issues with data conversion programs might benefit from the lessons we learned. Some of the lessons are specific to Microsoft CRM 4.0. But other lessons are of general interest. (more…)

May 25, 2011

Last week I attended a VERY cool talk on some new ways to do parallel programming, using the Task Parallel Library (TPL) introduced in .NET 4.0. Microsoft has made it so easy, that even a frozen caveman programmer like me can do it! If you are trying to decide what to learn next month, put this near the top of your list. (more…)